It’s ourgarage, ………..but I think y’all knew that’s where I was heading.

Jen Jones manages a family of 5 (3 small boys mind you) and 2 seperate blogs. I Heart Organizing, detailing her super-human skills for keeping everything in it’s place, and Keeping Up With the Jonses, following her life and the 4 men in it with her.

But, Barn Light Electric also sells the protective cages separately. Like the red one below……..Which means that we can always add those later on.

Can?

I mean that we WILL add them later.

Maybe red….maybe galvanized, We shall see.

Our H-Depot lights actually look pretty close to those in our inspiration pictures, except that they are brushed nickel. We simply need to spray paint them black so they look more like porcelain.

And……….Don’t we just love to spray paint things black around this house.

Semi-gloss black this time, I sprung for the $3 can of Rustoleum for this project. (up that “out-of-pocket” to 9 bucks now)

Here’s Jamie showing just about where they will hang in the garage…

It’s hard to tell from this picture, but all 4 will cover the ceiling in the garage quite nicely.

Why on Earth would someone mount the only light fixture in the whole room directly over the garage door opener??? It casts the perfect “garage door opener shaped” shadow down on the floor.

Don’t get me started.

My brother Ben had suggested that I run the electricity through conduit along the wall and ceiling like in a loft space, but I opted to just mount the lights directly on the ceiling with “Old Work” PVC ceiling boxes (“Old Work” means that they are going into existing drywall. I just cut a round hole in the drywall with a steak knife and slip the box inside. Then there are 3 screws that expand and hold the box to the ceiling (with all the neat little wiring hidden from view safely in the attic.)

In order to hide all the wiring in the attic, someone (i.e. Me) has to physically go into the attic to run the power lines from box to box.

That was my plan of attack……..

Now I’m not complaining, but I should mention that I am 6’2″, slightly over 230…..I’m a big guy. ….and our attic wasn’t exactly designed for big guys to work in.

The 2 electricians that we’ve had do work up there have been half my size.

Here’s a shot of the area I had to crawl through, CRAWL mind you, to reach my 4 mounting boxes over the garage.

Yes, I did have to shimmy under several low beams.

Yes, that is fiberglass insulation.

Yes, I did cover myself in a sweatshirt, jeans, gloves, and a mask since I would be crawling through/over all that insulation.

Why, Yes, it was unbearable hot with all those layers in late May.

And No, I don’t regret a minute of the sweat that it took…………………….They are everything that we wanted them to be.

Adding casters seemed like the next obvious step because we will be moving this thing all over the garage.* The holes in the feet lined up perfectly with the mounting holes in some locking casters from the hardware store.

Just bolted them on with machine screws and nuts.

They raised the height just slightly, but now it’s a better “working height” for 2 big guys like us.

(sidenote – someday we would like to park an actual vehicle in the garage, so mobile fixturing is a must)

I gave the whole wood surface a good sand with a heavy grit sandpaper. Not so much to make it perfect, we left most of the paint for character, but to clean off the “gunky” build up and to prepare the wood to soak in all that mineral oil.

This mineral oil to be exact….Watco rejuvenating oil.

As far as I can tell, it’s just mineral oil. Simply wipe it on with a clean soft cloth and let it soak in. You can see right away what a difference it makes in the wood. It was pretty dry, so I used about half of the can.

Just Beautiful, isn’t it? and a great place to use those Tolix-like stools we just got.

….and 100 percent free.

(Well, technical, I did spend 30$ on casters…and 4$ on spray paint, and, I suppose, another 4$ for mineral oil…and possibly about 3$ on sandpaper)